Trying to Watch as Many of the Films I Blind Bought This Year Before the Year Ends 1Night Games, directed by Mai Zetterling, 1966
Since I finished my Criterion Collection Challenge early, I figured I would challenge myself to something else. With all the film I have in my collection and how much were blind buys, I thought it would be a good idea to try to watch as many of these films I bought this year that I can just so that way my backlog doesn’t continue to grow infinitely. It would also be a good way for me to explain why I bought the films in the first place despite never seeing them before or knowing little to nothing about them.
Night Games was packaged together with Loving Couples, a film that was a part of my Criterion Collection Challenge. I was trying to stick to physical editions of films as much as possible. The age of streaming has proven to be unreliable and sporadic. Nothing is guaranteed to be anywhere online anymore and if it is online it is not guaranteed to be in the best quality available. By buying Three Films by Mai Zetterling, which was released by Criterion Collection nearly two years ago, was my best bet here. Zetterling was actually already on my radar prior to this purchase as she was an actress who was able to make the jump to directing at a time when the field was dominated heavily by men. After watching Loving Couples and how it explored female sexuality I did make a mental note to finish the set of films at some point but did not prioritize it
Night Games, much like Loving Couples, was focused on sexuality. However, it was focused on a sort of psychosexual stuntedness. Freud would love this. Yan, young man, soon to get married, returns to his childhood home and memories of all the things that happened in that house start to flood back into his mind. Oddly neglected by his party-loving parents, Yan was privy to several sights that he should not have seen at such a young age, ranging from the courtship of two adults to seeing his mother deliver a stillborn child simply because she didn’t want to leave a party. The cycle of abuse and neglect led to an obsession with his mother in a way that left him neglectful as an adult. The way Zetterling explores this through flashback is usually accompanied with clever edits that will mess with the perception of time. Present and past elements will blend together, unknown which is which until we see which version of Yan is visible to us. It’s rather impressive and builds an uneasy atmosphere among all the extravagance
What I found interesting as I was reading up more on the film is that this film is responsible for Shirley Temple stepping down from the board of the San Francisco Film Festival. Night Games was a controversial screening when it came stateside and when it was shown at SFFF it was screened for a private group of guests. Temple called the film “pornography”, a reflection of her own values in regards to art more than anything that is actually in the film.
Trying to Watch as Many of the Films I Blind Bought This Year Before the Year Ends 1Night Games, directed by Mai Zetterling, 1966
Since I finished my Criterion Collection Challenge early, I figured I would challenge myself to something else. With all the film I have in my collection and how much were blind buys, I thought it would be a good idea to try to watch as many of these films I bought this year that I can just so that way my backlog doesn’t continue to grow infinitely. It would also be a good way for me to explain why I bought the films in the first place despite never seeing them before or knowing little to nothing about them.
Night Games was packaged together with Loving Couples, a film that was a part of my Criterion Collection Challenge. I was trying to stick to physical editions of films as much as possible. The age of streaming has proven to be unreliable and sporadic. Nothing is guaranteed to be anywhere online anymore and if it is online it is not guaranteed to be in the best quality available. By buying Three Films by Mai Zetterling, which was released by Criterion Collection nearly two years ago, was my best bet here. Zetterling was actually already on my radar prior to this purchase as she was an actress who was able to make the jump to directing at a time when the field was dominated heavily by men. After watching Loving Couples and how it explored female sexuality I did make a mental note to finish the set of films at some point but did not prioritize it
Night Games, much like Loving Couples, was focused on sexuality. However, it was focused on a sort of psychosexual stuntedness. Freud would love this. Yan, young man, soon to get married, returns to his childhood home and memories of all the things that happened in that house start to flood back into his mind. Oddly neglected by his party-loving parents, Yan was privy to several sights that he should not have seen at such a young age, ranging from the courtship of two adults to seeing his mother deliver a stillborn child simply because she didn’t want to leave a party. The cycle of abuse and neglect led to an obsession with his mother in a way that left him neglectful as an adult. The way Zetterling explores this through flashback is usually accompanied with clever edits that will mess with the perception of time. Present and past elements will blend together, unknown which is which until we see which version of Yan is visible to us. It’s rather impressive and builds an uneasy atmosphere among all the extravagance
What I found interesting as I was reading up more on the film is that this film is responsible for Shirley Temple stepping down from the board of the San Francisco Film Festival. Night Games was a controversial screening when it came stateside and when it was shown at SFFF it was screened for a private group of guests. Temple called the film “pornography”, a reflection of her own values in regards to art more than anything that is actually in the film.
